


love of mine

by and_hera



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Birthday, F/M, Fluff, Introspection, Phone Calls & Telephones, but also so is gansey. gansey its a little gay to think about your friend's jaw, i know blue is a little in love with all of them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:35:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27186652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/and_hera/pseuds/and_hera
Summary: It’s eleven forty-two p.m., and Gansey has a mint leaf in his mouth. His headphones are in, and he’s listening to Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D. There’s a little voice in his head that sounds a lot like Blue, sayingyou and your pretentious music, Dick. Just listen to FM radio like the rest of us, and Gansey wants to kiss Blue, but that’s hardly a new development so he ignores it for now.or, Gansey has a birthday.
Relationships: Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent
Comments: 4
Kudos: 45





	love of mine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ninaxinej](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninaxinej/gifts).



> this is for my lovely friend audie's birthday. i love you auds, i hope you have a fantastic day <3  
> now like, i KNOW gansey is 17 through the whole series. but have you considered i haven't reread the series in a while so i made his 17th birthday ambiguously towards the beginning of the dream thieves, so blue and adam are sort of a thing, adam has moved out, and they know noah is a ghost.  
> and i haven't read the books in a while like i said, so if they're wildly ooc... sorry?  
> ok pls enjoy! title from i will follow you into the dark by death cab for cutie <3

Gansey has never been a big fan of birthday celebrations.

Okay, wait. That isn’t the complete truth. Gansey _is_ a fan of other people’s birthday celebrations. On Ronan’s birthday, they always go for a drive, and Gansey isn’t allowed to tell him to slow down once for all twenty-four hours (and once they near midnight, Ronan drives so frightfully fast that Gansey counts down the seconds). On Adam’s birthday, they go out to Nino’s, and it is in all regards like every other day- this is because Adam doesn’t know that Gansey knows it’s his birthday. Gansey is sure to be a little kinder, though. And he keeps Adam out as late as he can without risking his father’s wrath.

(Gansey is sure they’ve celebrated Noah’s birthday. He knows Noah’s birthday, it’s March 1st, so he has to have celebrated it. Noah likes parties.)

(But he doesn’t remember celebrating.)

(Gansey’s sure he just forgot about it.)

So, no, Gansey isn’t opposed to birthdays as a general concept. In fact, he’s rather fond of it.

It’s just that for him, aging isn’t necessarily a sign of change. Or a sign of anything good. It’s just another year that he hasn’t found his king, and another year of more of the same. And Gansey’s _fine_ with the same. He loves Henrietta, and he loves Ronan and Adam and Noah, and he isn’t quite willing to say that he loves Blue yet, but he’s sure that in due time he will.

Growing older. What a concept. If only Gansey didn’t feel old enough already. If only he didn’t think he would always be a boy.

It’s eleven forty-two p.m., and Gansey has a mint leaf in his mouth. His headphones are in, and he’s listening to Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D. There’s a little voice in his head that sounds a lot like Blue, saying _you and your pretentious music, Dick. Just listen to FM radio like the rest of us_ , and Gansey wants to kiss Blue, but that’s hardly a new development so he ignores it for now.

He’s going through his notebook again, because that’s what he tends to do when he wants to not really think about things. His notebook is as full as it can be. Gansey is sixteen, and he really shouldn’t get any older. You know, he asked a favor of the principal to find out what Adam’s birthday was. Maybe he shouldn’t have, and maybe that was an invasion of privacy, but it wasn’t like the principal cared, and it isn’t like Gansey ever brought it up. He just wanted to know.

Adam ages. He gets older and his jaw gets stronger and his shoulders get broader. Sometimes, when Gansey is being very Gansey, he’ll pat Adam’s back and he always feels his shoulder blades sticking out. And Ronan, well, Ronan’s always been ferocious, so it isn’t that he gets scarier. He’s as scary as he’ll be. He’s static. But he gets taller, and his teeth get sharper.

Gansey doesn’t think he’s supposed to get older. He is as old as he should be. He’s sixteen. His hair has a very specific wave in it that he works hard to preserve. His glasses leave a little mark on the bridge of his nose, but they’re just big enough he doesn’t need new ones. His notebook is filled to the brim with little doodles and newspaper clippings and yellowed pages and attempts at calligraphy with a mechanical pencil.

He blinks. His glasses are too small to slip off his nose, but they’re crooked. He looks down at his notebook, and lo and behold, he’s drawn a little tarot card. Unsurprisingly, it’s a Page of Cups, and if he had been spaced out any longer, he probably would have added sparkly hair clips to the girl’s hair.

(Next to the card is the word “Blue”, written in five different fonts.)

(Gansey removes the lead from his pencil. To prevent any further incidents.)

“What ‘cha doing?” Noah asks, and Gansey jumps because he didn’t notice Noah appearing at his left shoulder. He takes a headphone out and he shuts his notebook for good measure.

“I don’t know,” he confesses. “I don’t really know what I’m doing, ever, Noah.”

“Well, I meant what you were writing in your notebook,” Noah replies. “Not in a universal sense. But that’s okay.”

Gansey smiles. It’s not a Richard smile, either, it’s a Gansey smile. Gansey doesn’t know when he learned to tell the difference, because it used to be one and the same. It used to be Richard Gansey III, one person, one little ten year old boy who knew he died but didn’t know how to say it.

He thinks that his boys have helped. Separated the boy from the image. Jesus, he’s awfully poetic. He should go to sleep.

His watch reads eleven fifty-one, now. Noah is still staring at him. His face is a little more smudgy than usual, like someone erased his face and he’s outside the intended lines. Gansey probably needs to clean his glasses, and Noah probably needs to talk to someone about being dead. Gansey does not attempt to fix either of these things.

“I know it’s your birthday,” Noah says.

Gansey doesn’t flinch, because Ganseys don’t flinch. They handle things with grace. So instead, he furrows his brow and looks at Noah as if he has no idea what he’s talking about. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says.

“I know it’s your birthday,” Noah repeats. “It’s okay. I haven’t told the others.”

“How?” Gansey says. Because Gansey never offered up the information, Ronan doesn’t get along with authority well enough to ask a principal for his birthday, and Adam has the decency not to ask when someone tells him to leave well enough alone.

(He really shouldn’t have asked Adam’s birthday. But it’s okay, because he never brought it up with him. It’s fine.)

Noah shrugs. “I just know,” he says. “Happy birthday.”

“You’re about eight minutes too early,” Gansey replies.

Noah shrugs again, as it’s a favorite form of expression for him. “It’s not like you were born at midnight on the dot, anyway. Close enough.”

“Close enough,” Gansey concedes. “Thank you.”

Noah says, “Why don’t you tell people?”

“It’s really not important to talk about. I’m still the same person. It’s not like I’m magically someone else because I’m seventeen.”

“You’re a year older.”

“I’m a day older. The fact that the day coincides with a new year for me doesn’t mean much.”

“Adam wishes he knew,” Noah says. “And so does Ronan, but he won’t admit it.”

The first day Gansey met Ronan, it was Ronan’s birthday. A birthday for a Lynch is no small thing. When Ronan Lynch turned thirteen, the world didn’t stop, but it came close. Ronan essentially hijacked his car, and took them driving down a hill, and almost crashed the Pig, and he and Gansey were obsessed with each other instantly. Two stars orbiting each other.

(Really, when _did_ he get this poetic? Christ.)

“Adam said that?” Gansey asks.

Noah shakes his head. “But he wishes he knew,” he insists. His voice is getting fainter. “You should tell them it’s your birthday.”

Gansey sighs. His watch says eleven fifty-five. “I won’t,” he says. “Thanks for telling me, though.”

Noah salutes to him. And then he’s gone. He doesn’t walk away, but he’s gone.

He never told Noah what he was writing in his notebook, he realizes. Well, Noah didn’t seem too concerned about it anyway. Gansey often forgets other people. He’s not selfish, he tries to not be selfish, but he inherently is. And everyone can tell except for him. 

Gansey wonders if Blue is on the phone with Adam. He wonders if she’s laughing, the open-mouthed laugh he’s only seen a few times. When she laughs, she’s loud, because Blue is naturally a loud person. She and Ronan are similar in that regard. Her mouth falls open and you can see her teeth.

And she is Adam’s girl. Well, she is not anyone’s girl, Blue is her own. But she’s Adam’s girl.

Eleven fifty-seven. Gansey has three minutes left of being sixteen years old. And like he said, he is only going to be a day older, it isn’t like he’s a different person, but he _is_ going to be a different person.

He has his notebook. He runs his fingers over the leather cover. If his notebook doesn’t magically change at midnight, maybe Gansey will be able to stay the same. 

Some nights, Gansey feels like the loneliest boy in the world. Sure, Ronan is in the other room, snoring like- ha, like a chainsaw- and Noah has just left and Adam is just a call away but some nights Gansey feels like the loneliest boy in the world and no amount of physical closeness can change that. He thinks about the curve of Adam’s shoulder and the curl of Ronan’s lip and Blue’s collarbones.

He didn’t bother to pause his music when he took out his headphones, so when he puts them back in, a different piece is playing. It sounds like Claire de Lune. Gansey is going to be older and he shouldn’t be. He wants to kiss Blue Sargent. He wonders if she knows her last name is the middle name of a strong woman in American history, and he wonders if she likes that. He wonders if Adam considered asking about Gansey’s birthday. He doesn’t wonder if Ronan did, because Ronan wouldn’t.

Eleven fifty-nine. His ringtone plays, interrupting the swell of the music.

“Hello?” says Gansey.

“Dick Three?” says Blue, voice tinny over the phone.

“Oh,” he says politely. “Good evening, Jane.”

“Jesus,” she says under her breath. “Do you always have a stick up your ass?”

Gansey chokes, and then he laughs. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I was surprised to hear you. I didn’t know you had my number.”

“I didn’t,” Blue replies. “Persephone told me to call this number at midnight, and Persephone doesn’t really elaborate on things, so I figured I’d give it a shot.”

“You’re a minute early,” Gansey says.

“Not anymore,” Blue says. Gansey looks at his phone. Twelve-oh-one. He is seventeen. He runs his fingers over his notebook again. He is still a person. “So, d’you have any idea why I’m supposed to call you?”

Gansey hums. He really shouldn’t tell her, because he hasn’t told any of his best friends. He hasn’t known Blue for very long. But he’s fallen a little bit in love with her, so he says, “It’s my birthday today.”

Blue makes a surprised sound. “I didn’t know boys like you had birthdays.”

“Boys like me,” Gansey replies, taken aback. “What does that mean?”

“President Cell Phones,” Blue says. 

Gansey barks a laugh, and Blue snorts on her end, too. “I think everyone has birthdays,” he says. “Even presidents.”

“You made it sound like it’s a secret that it’s your birthday,” Blue comments.

“That’s because it is,” Gansey replies. “Big secret. No one knows it’s today.”

“Like you don’t have a fuckin’ festival to celebrate the king’s day of birth,” she laughs, and then there’s a beat. “Wait, are you serious?” Blue asks. “You don’t tell people your birthday?”

“I don’t see the need to celebrate.”

For whatever reason, Gansey thought Blue would be the person to tell him to fuck that, to go tell everyone, to celebrate. Or he thought that Blue would be the person to be glad that no one celebrates, because people like him don’t deserve celebrating.

(Blue isn’t cruel. Blue is loud and abrasive and beautiful and kind, and she is not cruel. Gansey doesn’t know why he thought that.)

But instead, Blue hums softly. “That doesn’t seem in character for you.” Not accusing, for once. Maybe the late hour has messed with her head. She’s just curious.

“Well, Jane, I don’t _always_ need all the attention in the world.”

“Then you should stop calling me Jane. Makes you unique to me.”

“Well, you call me everything from Dick Three to President Cell Phone, so I don’t know if you can talk.”

“That’s the difference between us, raven boy. I like the attention. I bask in it. You pretend like you don’t enjoy it, though.”

Gansey has slouched into his chair, now. Slouching is an old friend of his. Lately, he’s good at keeping his posture straight and tall. He knows slouching isn’t good for him. But some nights, he needs the look of a scholar obsessed, because he _is_ a scholar obsessed despite being sixteen and still fumbling over the first declension of Latin.

Seventeen. He’s seventeen, now.

And he’s technically not a scholar obsessed tonight. He kept his back straight until Blue called, and he isn’t studying her, not _really_. Not in any way that really matters.

“I suppose you’re right,” he says finally. 

“I always am,” Blue replies.

“Thank you for calling, Blue,” Gansey says.

“Happy Birthday, Gansey,” Blue replies.

She hangs up before he can. He was going to say something else. Something about it being a delight to speak with her. But it’s okay, because he thinks she might know that already.

Gansey doesn’t bother getting out of his rolling chair, just slides across the hard floor to his bed and dumps himself onto it. And he smothers his smile into a pillow like he’s ten. He’s seventeen and he’s alive and the girl he loves told him Happy Birthday. 

Maybe birthday celebrations aren’t all that bad.

(God, that’s so fucking cheesey. Gansey needs to go to sleep.)

So at twelve-oh-five, Gansey curls up in his blankets and his miniature Henrietta doesn’t get another house today, which is sad, because he was finally going to add 300 Fox Way, but it’s happy because he could sleep. 

Happy Birthday, Gansey, Blue said. He thinks he’ll have a good one.

**Author's Note:**

> ty for reading, pls leave comments and kudos and talk to me on twitter @lcvelaces :)


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